Why not more wireless connections?


Greetings

As far as I can tell, wireless is all around us but not so much in home audio systems. Why is that? Why not wireless connections between sources and amp and between amps and speakers? Why use wires at all? 

Thanks

bzawa

A lot of answers touching on the reasons, especially the carrying of required power and potential (voltage).

The ultimate disadvantage of wireless is headroom, even at multi-GHz connections.  What this means is you're listening to a dynamic range of frequencies between 20Hz and 20,000Hz.  Those frequencies have to be fit onto a channel with only so much bandwidth at 2.4GHz, 5GHz, 6GHz, or other carrier frequency.

Someone also mentioned interference so imagine sharing your music with one of the many other components on that wireless band and its sidebands and harmonics.  You start to compete for priority and, as a result, sound quality suffers.

If it's JUST data, you're usually okay because those are 1s and 0s.  But Bluetooth is a good example where you're basically broadcasting and receiving a radio signal at 2.4GHz.  Its a crap load better than 104.3MHz, but still not better than lamp cord 🙂

Wifi and Bluetooth only transmit data...

Bluetooth sound quality depends on the codec. LDAC supports high-res up to 24/96 and it really sounds quite good.

 

My mistake, Devin -- I thought Bluetooth acted like a broadcast.  I didn't know there was a conversion going on.  Thanks!  TIL 🙂

Mahgister is right. When I worked in the industry the reps would always tell us that interference was a real possibility. Especially in apartment buildings or where there was a lot of signal.